11 Most Evil Characters in Books 11 Most Evil Characters in Books By Koren Zailckas | Sep 13, 2013 Koren Zailckas's Mother, Mother is the kind of book that keeps you up at night, and it features a mother to rival Medea or Mrs. Bates. Zailckas picked 11 of her favorite evil characters. Evil is one of those capital-letter themes in literature. It’s right up there with Love, Death, Beauty, Friendship and Fate. Maybe that’s because Evil, like Death, catches us off guard. Sooner or later, we’re all assured a chance encounter with Evil, but we can’t predict when it’s coming for us, and we can only guess what painful form it will take. Most of us have encountered enough real-life villains to know Evil isn’t hooved and horned. Most disturbingly, Evil comes to us in human form, and the image it first puts forth is reasonable, even charismatic. Evil arrives to the job interview with a killer resume and big talk about improving profits.

It shows up to the first date with a fistful of flowers and a magnetic smile, holding open doors and saying what it senses you most want to hear. If we recognize Evil at all, it’s usually only in retrospect, after the things we cherish have been contaminated, our energies have been depleted, our sense of self has been swapped out for paralyzing self-doubt. In the words of Zbigniew Herbert, “the proof of the existence of the monster is in its victims.” Evil blankets things in a fog of confusion, wounding you long before you feel the first painful twinges, robbing you years before you think to lock your valuables away. These 11 baddies from books have a lot to teach us about Evil’s motivations and methodology. The tools of Evil’s trade are pretty consistent across the board: seduction, gaslighting, gossip, lies, exploiting our empathy to its advantage. But the purpose seems unclear even to Evil itself. In the end, maybe the scariest thing about villains is their total mindlessness. If we struggle to know Evil that’s because it doesn’t know itself. Mr.

Hyde, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Evil intersperses cruelty with kindness. Almost ninety years before the Norrmalmstorg robbery that brought about the term “Stockholm Syndrome,” Robert Louis Stevenson had an uncanny understanding of the way evils bonds with its victims. What keeps people locked in dangerous relationships? It’s Evil’s changing face--the way mind games are preceded by flattery, the way discord is glossed over with promises. The most painful thing about Evil is the duality of the feelings it inspires in us. As Jekyll says, “If each [good and evil], I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable...” Evil is freaky because we love and loathe it in equal parts, and we give it countless chances to redeem itself. Patrick Bateman from Bret Eason Ellis’s American Psycho - Evil is empty, emotionally flat, and perpetually bored.

Patrick Bateman, who fancies himself a yuppie serial killer, has pretty much no personality to speak of: “There is no real me, only an entity, something illusory.” Bateman’s critics include Naomi Wolff, who called American Psycho “the single most boring book I’ve been forced to endure.” But I’d argue that’s proof Bateman, like a skilled sociopath, has made her confuse his inner landscape for hers. “Indifferent to art, originality or even pleasure,” Bateman’s primary emotion is boredom. He is as bored by designer labels as he is by butchered body parts, and still he can’t stop his mindless pursuit of them. Evil lives as though life is a movie, and he or she is the star. Grandiosity is Bateman’s M.O. And Ellis’ cinematic style--using third person to describe the big chase scene, complete with big-budget-esque helicopters and gunfire--gives us one final glimpse of Evil’s unrealistic self image. Lacking empathy, Evil sees itself as the star of its own action film. Evil can’t feel for other people because it doesn’t believe the damage it inflicts is legitimate. Are the people clutching their wounds in pain real? Not to Evil.

Evil assumes other people are as fake as It is. Mrs. Danvers from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca - Evil likes to toy with other people’s boundaries. If Manderley feels like a haunted house, that’s due in part to head housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, whose voyeuristic talents practically include the ability to walk through walls. Like some omnipresent ghost, Danvers has her ear to every wall and her eye in every key hole. She uses what she finds to incrementally tear down our narrator down, moment by moment, notch by notch until the new Mrs. de Winter is such a trembling mess she’s open to even the most dangerous suggestions. Evil colonizes people. The fact that Danvers looks like a walking Scream-mask--dressed perpetually in black, with hollow eyes and a “white skull’s face”--seems to be Du Maurier’s way of reminding us that she’s killed off any semblance of herself. As the novel progresses, Danvers seems like little more than the sock puppet through which dead mistress Rebecca speaks. Danvers talks about Rebecca with the reverence of a Manson follower: “Of course he was jealous [of Rebecca]. So was I.

So was everyone who knew her.” Evil makes people drink the Kool-Aid. Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations - Evil takes a victim stance. When Pip’s heart is broken, he uses the experience as an opportunity to become a better man. When Miss Havisham is left at the altar, she uses it as an excuse to become a “rich and grim lady” and say sayonara to housekeeping and hygiene. One of literature’s all-time greatest man-haters, Miss Havisham swears off men completely and adopts Estella for the sole purpose of creating a heartbreaker. Poor Pip and Estella are both collateral damage in a war that has little to do with them. But how can you make a hermit see you’re suffering when she’s still wearing her mangy wedding dress and hasn’t seen sunlight in a decade? Why is it so hard to hold Evil accountable? Because Evil’s damn good at playing the victim. Ain’t no party like a pity party cause a pity party don’t stop. Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley - Evil wants status, even if it has to fake it or steal it.

Living in New York at the book’s start, Ripley is “bored, goddamn bloody bored, bored, bored,” enduring “constant demoralization because of having no money,” and taking up with “silly, stupid people in order not to be lonely or because they could offer him something for a while.” Leaping at the chance to go to Italy and bring home Dickie Greenleaf, the playboy son of a shipping magnate, Ripley finds what’s he’s actually been missing: a personality, and a larger than life one at that. First making a study of Greenleaf’s mannerisms, interests, preferences and past, Ripley goes on to assume his name, wear his clothes and cash his checks, murdering (or trying to murder) anyone who suspects the truth. Ripley is a chilling example of the way Evil sizes people up, taking an interest only in things it feels it can use to its advantage. And Highsmith leaves us with this frightening reminder: faced with its own inconsistencies, Evil would rather kill the person doing the questioning than take a realistic look at itself. Iago from Shakespeare’s Othello - Evil does it for kicks.

People have been debating why Iago meddled in Othello and Desdemona’s relationship for centuries. He wasn’t driven by revenge (like Hamlet) or ambition (like the Macbeths). I tend to side with Coleridge who figured Iago was fueled by pure “motiveless malignity.” He seems to like the process of Evil, even better than the outcome of it. Maybe sadistic entertainment kills his boredom. Or maybe it’s like a drug high, giving him short-lived feelings of dominance. Scoffing at virtue and seeing no inherent meaning in life, Evil has a lot of time on his hands--time it fills up with pointless deceits. If only Evil could take up Monopoly instead. But then, why be the little boot when you can play God? Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s Dracula - Evil can’t be solitary. Evil preys on the isolated. In Bram Stoker’s book, being alone is the equivalent of offering your neck to a vampire. Mina, for instance, only gets attacked by Dracula because she stays home alone instead of going along on a vampire hunt.

Aloneness in the world of Dracula is synonymous with being at risk, and everyone guards against it with hyper-vigilance: “You must not be alone; for to be alone is to be full of fears and alarms.” It’s easier to inflict evil on those who are cut off from a support system. But Dracula’s fear of solitude also clues us into Evil’s fears about itself. At it’s heart, Evil is parasitic. Evil would starve without the the willful (or forced) participation of others. It finds the shyest, most vulnerable part of ourselves and gleefully sticks its teeth into it. Don Juan from Tirso di Molina’s El Burlador de Sevilla - Evil is smooth-talking and impulsive. It makes grand gestures and loves a conquest.

“How well you talk!” Tisbea says, when a nearly drowned Don Juan still finds the breath to shower her with come ons: “While I’m alive, I am your slave;” “Why fill my ears with wax when you kill me with your eyes?” But what read like cheesy lines to us works a treat on single girl from a modest background, who confuses her desire to take care of someone with “love.” Tisbea adopts Don Juan like an unemployed drifter with bad credit until, lied to, deceived and robbed of her honor, she realizes that she “nursed (her) ruin.” Why do we fall for Evil? Because in the beginning, Evil is very attentive. It figures out what we want and then makes itself compatible. Everything that follows is a bait-and-switch scam. Evil is a damn good pick up artist. Cruella de Vil from Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians - Evil objectifies.Cruella de Vil’s crimes of fashion are even more pronounced in Dodie Smith’s 1956 novel.

Cruella dreams of pairing a dogskin coat over a black suit; “[it] would go so well with my car and my black and white hair.” But this isn’t just a case for PETA. It’s also a very good example of the way Evil reduces companions to accessories or status symbols. We get the impression that Cruella has assessed every person and pet in her world and attached a numerical value to them. She even claims she’d drown her beautiful, white Persian cat “if she wasn’t so valuable.” Evil, it would seem, reduces living things to commodities, especially those foolish enough to lick its knee. Mrs. Coulter from Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy - Evil ruins childhood and refuses kids the tools to grow up. Mrs. Coulter, the head of the General Oblation Board, looks and even “smells” like glamor, but she is also described by Metatron as a “cess-pit of moral filth,” “pure, poisonous, toxic malice.” Maybe that has something to do with the fact that she wants to separate children from their souls (daemons) or, dare I say, their growing agency.

The procedure involves a silver guillotine, and the result is stunting, keeping them from ever reaching adulthood. It’s hard to say what evil has against children. Maybe Evil envies childhood innocence. Or maybe kids are simply an easy target. Lucifer from (among others) Dante’s Inferno - Evil is mindless suffering and a blind compulsion to act out a painful past. Dante’s Lucifer is the perfect amalgamation of everything I’ve mentioned so far. Lucifer is isolated. Lucifer is blank: “a once splendid being (indeed the most perfect of God’s creatures) from whom all personality has now drained away.” Covered in ice, Lucifer alone is to blame for his freezer burn. He beats his wings, creating the cold breeze that keeps the Ninth Circle of Hell arctic. Why can’t he stop flapping? Maybe because he’s having flashbacks, still reliving the moment he tried to ascend into heaven and establish his throne above the stars and God. Either way, in Dante’s world, Satan is in just as much agony as the three sinners he holds in his mouth. He’s no all-mighty Hell-beast, just another victim of his own tortures.

Evil, it would seem, suffers most of all. ADVERTISEMENT SparkNotes: Rebecca: Summary SparkNotes Context Characters Rebecca's narrative takes the form of a flashback. The heroine, who remains nameless, lives in Europe with her husband, Maxim de Winter, traveling from hotel to hotel, harboring memories of a beautiful home called Manderley, which, we learn, has been destroyed by fire. The story begins with her memories of how she and Maxim first met, in Monte Carlo, years before. In her flashback, the heroine is working as the young traveling companion to a wealthy American named Mrs. Van Hopper. In her flashback, Maxim is staying at the same hotel as the heroine and her employer, and after knowing the heroine for only a few weeks, he proposes marriage. She accepts, and he marries her and takes her back to his ancestral estate of Manderley. But a dark cloud hangs over their marriage: Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, drowned in a cove near Manderley the previous year, and her ghost haunts the newlyweds' home. Rebecca's devoted housekeeper, the sinister Mrs. Danvers, is still in charge of Manderley, and she frightens and intimidates her new mistress.

Despite the encouragement of the house overseer, Frank Crawley, and Maxim's sister, Beatrice, the heroine struggles in her new life at Manderley. She feels that she can never compare favorably to Rebecca, who was beautiful, talented, and brilliant--or so everyone says--and soon she feels that Maxim is still in love with his dead wife. Manderley traditionally hosts a costume ball each year, and it is soon time for the gala to take place. Swept up in the preparations, the heroine's spirits begin to revive. But the ball ends in disaster: on Mrs. Danvers's suggestion she wears a costume that, it turns out, is the same dress that Rebecca wore at the last ball. Upon seeing the heroine, Maxim is horrified, and the heroine becomes convinced that he will never love her, that he is still devoted to Rebecca. The following day, Mrs. Danvers almost convinces her to kill herself, and she only breaks away from the old woman's spell when rockets go off over the cove, signaling that a ship has run aground. When divers swim near the grounded ship, they find the wreckage of Rebecca's sailboat, with Rebecca's dead body in the hold.

This discovery prompts Maxim to tell the heroine the truth: Rebecca was a malevolent, wicked woman, who lived a secret life and carried on multiple affairs, including one with her cousin, Jack Favell. On the night of her death, Maxim had demanded a divorce, and she had refused, and told him that she was pregnant with Favell's child. Furious, he seized a gun and shot her, and then sailed out to the harbor in Rebecca's boat and sank it, with the body stowed safely inside. This revelation restores the heroine's marriage, and enables her to finally shake off the burden of Rebecca's ghost. Meanwhile, however, the noose of justice tightens around Maxim: first, it is found that holes have been drilled in the bottom of Rebecca's boat; luckily the coroner delivers a report of suicide, rather than murder. But soon Rebecca's cousin Favell, certain that Rebecca did not kill herself, accuses Maxim of the crime. The local magistrate, Colonel Julyan, investigates, and finds that on the day of her death, Rebecca went up to London to see a Doctor Baker.

Favell, Maxim, and the heroine accompany Julyan to London; the heroine is certain that Baker will reveal that Rebecca was pregnant, thus revealing Maxim's vengeful motive for murder. But instead, it turns out that Rebecca was dying of cancer, and that furthermore she was infertile; she had lied to Maxim about her pregnancy. Her terminal illness now supplies a motive for Rebecca's supposed suicide, and Maxim is saved. He and the heroine drive all night back to Manderley, stopping only once, when Maxim calls home and learns that Mrs. Danvers has disappeared. As they crest the ridge near the mansion, they look down and find it in flames. More Help Rebecca (1940) - FAQ The content of this page was created directly by users and has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff. Visit our FAQ Help to learn more FAQ How much sex, violence, and profanity are in this movie? For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie.

The Parents Guide for Rebecca can be found here . What is 'Rebecca' about? After the accidental death of his first wife Rebecca over a year ago, Maxim de Winter ( Laurence Olivier ) falls in love with a shy, inexperienced woman traveling in Monte Carlo as a companion to a wealthy widow. The second Mrs de Winter ( Joan Fontaine ) moves with her new husband back to Manderley, his large country estate on the Cornwall (England) seacoast, and is immediately intimidated by the housekeeper, Mrs Danvers ( Judith Anderson ), who runs the gigantic house with an iron hand and makes it obvious that she adored Rebecca. In fact, the memory of Rebecca seems to haunt everyone, including Maxim. Is this movie based on a book? Yes. Rebecca is based on a 1938 novel by British writer Daphne du Maurier. The novel was adapted for the movie by British screenwriters Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan. The movie was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and won the 1941 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. Why didn't Maxim fire Mrs Danvers after Rebecca died?

According to the novel, Maxim thought that if he had fired her she could have suspected the truth, as she was the only one that saw him get back to the house so late the night Rebecca died. On top of that, Maxim may not have realized just how disturbed Danvers was because she seemed like the ideal housekeeper -- silent, matriarchal, and capable of complete control -- and Mrs. de Winter never tells him what she's seen and felt around her. Why did Mrs Danvers reveal Rebecca's room and private things to the new Mrs de Winter? Most likely, Danvers was trying to prove to the second Mrs de Winter that she is a pale shadow compared with Rebecca, playing on her lack of self-confidence and her rather childish love for her husband. She wants to either drive her to suicide (which she almost does) or force her to run away. Danvers seems to believe that Maxim was as obsessed with Rebecca as she was. How does the movie end? The inquest is halted long enough for Maxim, Flavell, Frank Crawley ( Reginald Denny ), and Colonel Julyan ( C. Aubrey Smith ) to drive to London and interview Dr Baker ( Leo G.

Carroll ) about Rebecca's secret visit to him on the day she died. Flavell assumes that it was because Rebecca was pregnant with his child, but Dr Baker reveals that she was terminally ill with cancer and had but a few months to live. Based on Baker's report, the final verdict in the inquest is that Rebecca committed suicide. Maxim realizes that Rebecca telling him she was pregnant was actually her goading him into killing her. Flavell phones Danvers to tell him how Rebecca lied to them both about being pregnant. Maxim and Crawley hurry back to Manderley only find it on fire. Maxim searches frantically for his wife and finds her safe in the yard. His wife tells him that Danvers set Manderley on fire because she would rather see it go up in smoke than allow Maxim and his new wife to live there. As the flames engulf the west wing, Danvers can be seen through Rebecca's bedroom window. In the final scene, the pillow covering bearing Rebecca's monogram is visible through the flames. How closely does the movie follow the novel? Those who have both read the book and seen the movie generally report that they are quite different. One major difference is the circumstances surrounding Rebecca's death.

In the movie, Rebecca is killed when she falls and hits her head on a boat tackle, whereas in the novel Rebecca is shot by Maxim. There are some character differences, too. For example, Jack Favell ( George Sanders ) in the movie is not the drunken slob that's portrayed in the novel. Mrs Danvers of the novel was an older woman and was more torn by Rebecca's death. In the movie, Danvers is younger, cold and vicious, and more like a partner to Rebecca's evil. Another difference that irks some viewers is that, in the novel, the second Mrs de Winter undergoes a tremendous character transformation upon Maxim revealing to her that he never loved Rebecca. All her insecurity vanishes and she immediately becomes equal to the role of mistress of Manderley, even standing up to Mrs. Danvers now that she feels secure in her husband's love. The transformation of Mrs de Winter in the film occurs BEFORE Maxim's revelation when she simply declares out of the blue that she is Mrs de Winter now!

SparkNotes: Rebecca: Chapters 24-27 Chapters 24-27 page 1 of 2 Summary Favell proceeds to tell Colonel Julyan that he and Rebecca were lovers, that the two were planning to get married, and that Maxim killed her out of jealousy. However, Favell's obvious drunkenness inclines the Colonel to distrust his words; he demands to know if Favell has any proof of his accusations, any witnesses to back up what he says. After thinking a moment, Favell says to call Ben, the retarded man who lives near the beach. Remembering Ben's cryptic comments about a "dark lady" who "won't come back again," the heroine fears that Ben might indeed have witnessed the murder, and that he will testify accordingly. But Ben, clutching his cap and whimpering about being put in an asylum, says that he saw nothing, and denies ever having seen Favell before. Colonel Julyan points out that Favell cannot even prove that he and Rebecca were lovers at all. "Can't I?" he smirks, and calls for Mrs. Danvers.

The old housekeeper tells the magistrate that yes, Favell and Rebecca were having an affair--but her mistress never cared about him: "Lovemaking was a game with her, only a game," she repeats adamantly, threatening to become hysterical. Colonel Julyan attempts to extract more useful knowledge from her, asking if Rebecca had any motive for suicide at the time of her death. Mrs. Danvers dismisses the idea, but mentions that she still has Rebecca's engagement book, documenting where she went in London the day she died. The book is fetched, and it shows that Rebecca had an afternoon appointment with a man named Baker, who turns out to be a doctor, a woman's specialist. It is decided that the whole company, save for Mrs. Danvers, will journey to London and interview him tomorrow. It seems to the heroine, and to Maxim, that at last they will be found out. Dr. Baker will surely testify that Rebecca was pregnant; with this disclosure, the law authorities will surely suspect that Maxim killed his wife out jealous rage (as he did).

Maxim and the heroine spend the night together "like guilty lovers," and the next morning they arise early and drive to London, accompanied by a now-sober Favell and the Colonel. Dr. Baker meets with them, and goes back over his records until he finally remembers Rebecca: she came to him under an assumed name, he says, calling herself "Mrs. Danvers." He tells the group that she was suffering from an incurable disease, an inoperable cancer of some sort. She had asked for a truthful diagnosis, he says, and he gave her one, telling her that she had only a few months to live. Incidentally, Dr. Baker adds, her uterus was malformed, and she could never have had children. Thus from Colonel Julyan's perspective the mystery is solved, for Rebecca did have a motive for suicide. However, he advises Maxim and the heroine to leave the region for the time being, to take a holiday on the Continent, perhaps, until the gossip dies down. Favell drives away, shaken, muttering about whether cancer is contagious. Together, Maxim and the heroine begin the long trip back to Manderley.

Night falls, and they find an inn and stop for the evening; Maxim telephones the butler Frith, and learns that Mrs. Danvers has vanished. He becomes uncomfortable, and after he dinner he decides not to spend the night at the inn, but to drive straight through until morning. The heroine sleeps in the car, dreaming fitfully, and in her dream she goes to the mirror and sees Rebecca's face instead of her own. She awakens suddenly, and sits beside Maxim for the rest of the drive. At one point she believes that she has glimpsed the sunrise: an orange glow permeates the horizon. But the glow is coming from the west, from over the hills ahead of them. The couple comes over a ridgeline and looks down into the valley; before them lies Manderley, consumed by leaping flames. Commentary The scene in Dr. Baker's office offers the book's second great plot twist, and serves as the novel's denouement. Both the heroine and the reader assume that Dr. Baker will reveal what Rebecca told Maxim that fateful night--that she was pregnant with Favell's child.

But now we learn that Rebecca's statement to Maxim was merely another one of her many lies: indeed, perhaps this last deceit was even calculated to make Maxim kill her, and thereby to bring about his death when the murder was found out. Lastly, the fact that Rebecca was sterile resonates somewhat symbolically: just as no good can come of evil, so too can no child issue from Rebecca's womb. The final pages of the novel see Maxim and the heroine driving home, apparently victorious. But Rebecca has taken the form of a flashback; the reader knows that in the book's "present," Manderley has burned. Thus we do not need the news of Mrs. Danvers's disappearance to warn us that trouble is awaiting the de Winters upon their return home. (While we never know for certain that Mrs. Danvers set the fire, all the signs point to such a conclusion.) And in a way, the burning of the house is the price the heroine and her husband must pay for their triumph over Rebecca: they have overcome her insidious power, but they have done so by murder and concealment, and they must answer for this. 1 Mrs.

Danvers | Villains Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia To keep Rebecca's memory alive and get rid of any replacement Type of Villain Obsessed Mrs. Danvers is the antagonist of Daphnée Du Maurier's novel Rebecca, made internationally famous by its movie adaptation by Sir Alfred Hitchcock. An icy, stern and imposing figure never ever seen smiling, Mrs. Danvers (portrayed in the movie by Judith Anderson) has been widely praised as one of the most memorable movie villainesses ever seen. She is is the housekeeper of the Manderley estate, property of the wealthy aristocrat Maxim de Winter, and harbors an unhealthy adoration for Maxim's late wife, the eponymous Rebecca. In the beginning of the story, a young woman whose name is never revealed meets Maximilian de Winter, a widower aristocrat, in Monte Carlo. The two fall in love and get quickly married, and Maxim takes his new wife to his country manor of Manderley, where she is welcomed warmly by all the servants working there. The new Mrs. de Winter then meets the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who greets her rather coldly but does not display any open dislike. Mrs.

Danvers shows her new mistress her quarters and her study, where all the bedsheets and even the pieces or paper bear an embroidered 'R', the initial of Maxim's first wife, Rebecca: a beautiful and sophisticated woman who seemed to be the perfect noble lady in all regards, and who died a year ago in mysterious circumstances, when her yacht sank. As the story progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that Mrs; Danvers despises her new mistress, whom she regards as a pale substitute, and that she admired Rebecca to the point of adoration. An adoration unveiled slowly but surely, each second more disturbing than the previous one. The new Mrs. de Winter, who comes from a modest background, has difficulties to adapt to her new role and to cope with Rebecca's haunting presence, which marks the manor as if she was still living there. A presence kept alive by Mrs. Danvers, who keeps Rebecca's old bedroom perfectly tidy and organized like a shrine of some sort. Mrs. Danvers uses her new mistress' doubts against her, always suggesting or making seem that Rebecca was a better lady and even a better wife, to such extent than the new Mrs.

de Winter begins to doubt Maxim's love for her, believing that he still prefers Rebecca. It also appears that Rebecca's "cousin" Jack Favell, (in fact one of her lovers) frequently visits Manderley when Maxim is away, being in friendly terms with Mrs. Danvers. Mrs Danvers attempts to have Mrs de Winter leap to her death At some point, Mrs. de Winter orders Mrs. Danvers to get rid of everything in her quarters that belonged to Rebecca, stating that she is the new Mrs. de Winter. Mrs. Danvers complies, and in what first appears to be better dispositions towards her new mistress, she advises her to wear the same dress as one of Maxim's female ancestors, who is represented on a painting, for the upcoming costume party. It soon appears that Rebecca wore the exact same dress in a costume party the year before, something that infuriates Maxim to the point of yelling at his wife. Distraught and confused, Mrs. de Winter flees to her room and enters a sort of trance. As she is standing near the open window, Mrs. Danvers approaches and nearly causes her to commit suicide, by telling her that no one will ever replace Rebecca.

Shortly after, Rebecca's sunken yacht is discovered. It appears that the ship was sabotaged so that it would sink at sea and that Rebecca's corpse is still inside, Maxim having identified another drowned woman as his first wife one year ago. Maxim is immediately suspected of having murdered Rebecca. He then confesses to his wife that he always hated Rebecca, who is then revealed to have been in fact a vain and dislikeable woman, whom he wed for an arranged marriage and who openly cheated on him many times, while always appearing as a paragon of virtue. He also confesses that Rebecca died during a heated argument, in which she had claimed to be pregnant with an illegitimate baby that would inherit Maxim's name and title, driving him over the edge. Rebecca died when she hit her head in an accidental fall in the midst of the skirmish (in the original novel, Maxim purposely shot her). Maxim later sabotaged her yacht and put her corpse in, so that it would disappear at sea. Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell, who are convinced that Maxim killed Rebecca and that her unborn baby was Jack's, go to the police and try to have Maxim judged. However, it is ultimately revealed by a doctor whom Rebecca consulted under Mrs.

Danvers' name that not only she could not have children due to a malformation of her uterus, but she was dying of a cancer. She then staged her "murder" by the hands of her husband, probably hoping that he would get arrested. Now that Rebecca's suicide has been established, Maxim returns to Manderley, only to find it ablaze. His wife then welcomes him in a loving embrace, telling him that Mrs. Danvers set the manor on fire, for she would rather destroy it than witness them living happily in it. The demented housekeeper is last seen wandering in the midst of the fire, shortly before the blazing roof collapses killing her (in the novel, it is said that Mrs. Danvers fled before burning Manderley, never to be seen again). In the final scene of the movie, the flames are seen devouring the embroidered 'R' on a pillow (in a fashion similar to the flames devouring the 'Rosebud' sledge in Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane) ending Rebecca's haunting grasp over those who knew her for good.

Dame Judith Anderson Dies at 93 - An Actress of Powerful Portrayals - NYTimes.com Dame Judith Anderson Dies at 93; An Actress of Powerful Portrayals By ERIC PACE Published: January 4, 1992 Dame Judith Anderson, who electrified Broadway audiences in 1947 with her savage performance of the title role in "Medea" and was a memorably sinister housekeeper in the 1940 film "Rebecca," died yesterday at her home in Santa Barbara, Calif. She was 93 years old. The cause of death was not disclosed. Dame Judith, who was born in Australia, was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1960 for "distinguished contributions to the stage." For years she was one of the first ladies of the American theater, repeatedly portraying women gripped by powerful emotions.

After the Broadway premiere of the 1947 "Medea" -- a new adaptation of Euripides's drama, written for Dame Judith by the poet Robinson Jeffers -- Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times that she had "set a landmark in the theater" with her "inspired performance of rage and revenge." Her fiery portrait of a barbarian woman who takes revenge on Jason, the unfaithful father of her two sons, by murdering them won the actress an honored niche in theater history. Many Notable Roles Among the actress's other notable stage roles were Lavinia Mannon in Eugene O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1932), Delia in Zoe Atkins's "Old Maid" (1935) and Gertrude in "Hamlet" (1936). She was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her portrayal of the malevolent housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca," a Gothic romance directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier.

She displayed her versatility in a wide range of movie roles, among them the biblical Queen Herodias in "Salome" (1953) and an Indian woman named Buffalo Cow Head in "A Man Called Horse" (1970). Dame Judith's television successes included her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in 1960 in an NBC-TV "Hallmark Hall of Fame" production. Born to Be Evil Early in her career, in a 1924 issue of Theater Magazine, Dame Judith wrote, "I like emotional roles because they permit unleashing of one's feelings." She gave full rein to those feelings in "Medea," a role she seemed to have been born to play. The Broadway production ran for 214 performances and went on an eight-month tour coast to coast. In 1949, she played the part again in New York City in the Jeffers adaptation, this time at City Center, in a production presented and staged by Guthrie McClintic. She performed in the play again in later years, venturing as far as Paris, Berlin and Canberra, Australia. As time passed, she came to take a broad view of the actor's craft.

"We live, we breathe, we experience, we die, we love, we hate, we experience beauty and tragedy, and we find it in the parts we play," she said in a 1984 interview, adding, "Whatever I do, I'm passionate about." Dame Judith first appeared onstage in 1915 in Sydney, Australia. She made her New York stage debut in 1918 and went on to spend much of her life in the United States. When she appeared in a 1936 production of "Hamlet" at the Empire Theater, Brooks Atkinson wrote that in her performance as Hamlet's mother, the queen, she had "abandoned the matronly stuffiness that usually plagues that part and given us a woman of strong and bewildered feeling." She went on to play Lady Macbeth in London in 1937. In 1971 she realized a long-held dream by playing Hamlet in a production staged at Carnegie Hall, but her performance was not well received.

Resonance of Tradition Reviewing the 1982 revival of "Medea," in which she played the nurse who tries in vain to thwart Medea's murderous intentions, Frank Rich wrote in The Times that Dame Judith's presence "gives this 'Medea' the valuable resonance of theatrical tradition" and praised her acting as harrowing. The production was broadcast on public television the next year. She went on to play a grand dame on an NBC-TV daytime drama, "Santa Barbara," which made its debut in 1984. Her first line, spoken to her chauffeur, was "Ambrose, why have we stopped?" Then she tapped him with a riding crop. A Namesake Off Broadway The woman who chose to be known professionally as Judith Anderson was named Frances Margaret when she was born on Feb. 10, 1899, to James Anderson-Anderson and the former Jessie Saltmarsh. After attending Australian schools, she made her 1915 stage debut in "A Royal Divorce" at the Theater Royal in Sydney. Seven decades later in New York City, the former Lion Theater on West 42d Street was renamed the Judith Anderson Theater in her honor.

Speaking at a ceremony there, she looked back on what she called "my failures and my successes, my tears and my laughter, my joys and my sorrows, my heartbreaks and my loves, and my pride and my gratitude for the wonderful audiences that have played their music for me to listen to." Dame Judith's 1937 marriage to Benjamin Harrison Lehman, a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, ended in divorce in 1939. Her 1946 marriage to Luther Greene, a theatrical producer, ended in divorce in 1950. There are no immediate survivors. Photo: Dame Judith Anderson in the title role of "Medea" at the National Theater in New York in 1947. (Valente) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - Paperback Author Info About the Book With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew.

For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca. This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more. Trimsize: 5.313 in (w) x 8 in (h) x 0.937 in (d) Pages: 416 Rebecca (Literature) - TV Tropes "You're overwrought, madam; I've opened a window for you." "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." — The Second Mrs. de Winter, her opening narration from both film and novel.

A 1938 novel written by Daphne du Maurier (who also wrote Jamaica Inn , and the story that became The Birds ). In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock directed the film version, his first American project, which starred Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier . It won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was the only Hitchcock film to win Best Picture, and Hitchcock didn't win Best Director—he never did, in fact, and had to settle for a lifetime achievement Oscar late in life. A musical version debuted in Vienna, Austria in 2006. While working in Monte Carlo as the companion for the wealthy Mrs. Van Hopper, our young unnamed heroine meets the much wealthier Maxim de Winter: a moody, inscrutable widower presumed still to be in deep mourning for his late wife, the beautiful Rebecca, tragically drowned in a boating accident. Thus no-one is more surprised than the shy, gauche little companion when Maxim not only seems attracted to her but impetuously proposes they wed there and then. The first signs of trouble in Paradise appear when they arrive at his elegant old country estate, Manderley.

The servants have grown too fond of its late mistress and receive their new one coolly. Mrs. Danvers, the current housekeeper and Rebecca's former handmaid, is especially less than thrilled with the prospect of anyone taking Rebecca's place, and has made something of a fetish of keeping her darling's things exactly as she left them — stationery in the desk, clothes in the cupboards — all monogrammed with that bold, decisive initial R. As the novel progresses the shadow of Rebecca hangs more and more heavily over the house, making it increasingly difficult for our heroine to face the challenges not only of running a great estate but within her marriage — especially when it's increasingly clear that the two are related. Gradually, with a not-so-subtle assist from Mrs. Danvers, she begins to despair of ever living up to the perfect, proud, beloved Rebecca... ...then they find the remains of a boat... This and its adaptations feature examples of: Accidental Murder : In the Hitchcock film, Maxim accidentally killed Rebecca; he got angry and pushed her, and she fell and struck her head. In the original novel, he shot her, very much on purpose. She rather had it coming, to the point of taunting him into doing it.

Adaptational Heroism : Both the Hitchcock film and the musical do this to Maxim by eliminating his murder of Rebecca, the former by necessity of the Hays Code. By extension, this removes the potentially psychotic element from his wife's decision to help him, helping to make her more sympathetic and heroic after The Reveal . The musical in particular portrays her as becoming a confident woman that doesn't take Mrs. Danvers's bullying any longer so that the audience can root for her. She and Maxim are seen as very happy together and kiss at the end, which is much clearer than the ambiguous future of their relationship in the novel. Adaptational Karma : In the book, Mrs Danvers escapes Manderly after she burns it to the ground. The film - by order of the Hays Code - shows her dying in the fire. Adaptational Villainy : A consequence of the elimination of Maxim's murder of Rebecca in the Hitchcock film is that Jack Favell's persecution of Maxim is now based completely on a falsehood. Affectionate Nickname : Both Rebecca and Favell called Mrs Danvers 'Danny' affectionately. All Girls Want Bad Boys : The second Mrs.

de Winter becomes even more passionately in love with Maxim once he admits that he killed Rebecca. Justified because the second Mrs. de Winter's greatest fear was that Maxim still loved Rebecca. When he confesses to killing her, it proves that he doesn't and never did. However, the novel repeatedly hints that Maxim is actually rather weak-willed (as demonstrated by Rebecca's successful Suicide by Cop ). Moreover, when the novel opens, Maxim's bad boy days are long gone. Daphne du Maurier always said her novel Rebecca was a study in jealousy - Telegraph Books Daphne du Maurier always said her novel Rebecca was a study in jealousy Seventy-five years after Daphne du Maurier published 'Rebecca’, her son tells Christian House how the author’s own torrid life inspired this enduring story The seed of the Rebecca story lay in Daphne du Maurier's jealousy of her husband's first fiancee Photo: REX By Christian House Comments 'Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” wrote Daphne du Maurier in her notes. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night… a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang!

Something happens.” Seventy-five years ago this month, Rebecca was published, and readers flooded bookshops to discover the dark nature of that “something”. The novel was to be du Maurier’s masterpiece and a classic of 20th-century fiction that continues to enthral today. “It goes on and it goes on,” says Kits Browning, du Maurier’s son, leaning back in his sofa at Ferryside, the house in Fowey, in Cornwall, that has been in the du Maurier family since the Twenties. “It’s the old cliché. It’s a bloody good story. And it still sells more than any of her other books.” An impressive 4,000 a month, by the reckoning of its publishers Virago, and it has never been out of print. A film-maker and photographer by profession, Browning first read it “more in visual terms” but has re-read it many times, and “I always find different things about it”. With his matinee-idol wave of hair and yacht-club bonhomie, at 72, Browning retains a jovial manner.

Ferryside, perched on the Fowey estuary, was once part of a boatyard, and as we discuss the legacy of Rebecca, boat horns and the scream of gulls echo in from the water. Related Articles Growing up in the house that inspired 'Rebecca' 26 Apr 2013 It was to this house that Daphne du Maurier returned in 1937 from Egypt, where her husband, Major Tommy “Boy” Browning, commanding officer of the Second Battalion, Grenadier Guards, was stationed in Alexandria. It was in Egypt that she had sketched out the story of Rebecca; in Ferryside, she got down to serious writing, surrounded by the squalls and sails that feature in the doom-laden narrative. The novel’s nameless young narrator is perplexed by her volatile new husband, Maxim de Winter, the rich owner of the grand Cornish estate, Manderley.

Maxim is the kind of charmer who proposes by snapping: “I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” His first wife, the glorious but perhaps malevolent Rebecca, drowned in a sailing accident, but her spirit remains, infused in the masonry of Manderley and the seething glare of its housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. In August 1938, Rebecca caught the zeitgeist, drawing on the glamour of country society and the feeling of impending catastrophe that permeated the pre-war years. Put coarsely, it is a novel about a dead woman and a house. Both of which were drawn from the author’s life. “Mum used to get fed up talking about it,” says Browning. “She did get so irritated with people calling it a romantic novel. Because she always said it was a study in jealousy.” The seed of the story lay in du Maurier’s jealousy of Jan Ricardo, the first fiancée of her husband. “I know that she came across one or two letters or cards, fairly sort of harmless things, where Jan did sign 'Jan Ricardo’ with this wonderful great R,” says Browning, flourishing his hand in the air.

It is a portentous curlicue that is emulated in the book. “The name Rebecca,” wrote du Maurier, “stood out black and strong, the tall and sloping R dwarfing the other letters.” Ricardo later threw herself under a train, although not, Browning says, due to his parents’ marriage. Still, it is said that Daphne was haunted by the suspicion that her husband remained attracted to Ricardo. Manderley was based on Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire, which du Maurier visited in her youth, but she placed it in the setting of Menabilly, the home she leased, hidden away in the woods by the Gribbin Head outside Fowey, and where the family moved after Ferryside. “She always had this thing that places were more important than people,” explains Browning; and, indeed, while she was in Egypt, she had confessed to missing the then-abandoned house of Menabilly more than her two children (Kits had yet to be born). It was at Milton Hall that she conceived of Mrs Danvers. “She saw this tall, dark housekeeper woman.

They were always called Mrs, even if they weren’t married, like Mrs Hudson in Sherlock Holmes,” says Browning. “That’s where she first saw this terribly sinister-looking lady. I don’t think she ever spoke to her, it was just a look that sunk in.” Manderley, like Hogwarts and Brideshead, is a name fixed in our imagination. Yet the anonymity of the novel’s narrator continues to intrigue. “She couldn’t think what to call her and so she didn’t call her anything. And then it became a challenge: could she actually write the whole thing without it,” says Browning. “Funnily enough, in the Hitchcock film, in the script she is written as 'I’, but they all called her 'Daphne’ on the shoot.” Both Mrs de Winters were drawn from du Maurier’s own character. “I always identified Mum with the second, rather timid one,” says Browning. “It was totally split, because she was just as good as Rebecca at the sailing and all that toughness.” And what about Rebecca’s cruel streak; did she possess that? “No. But, there again, who says it was cruelty? It’s Maxim’s version, isn’t it?

There’s so much in that book, you know. Was he lying? Why is it that everybody else thought the sun shone out of her a---? There’s never a bad word about Rebecca except from Max. That’s why it runs and runs.” Laurence Olivier immortalised the moody figure of Maxim in Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning 1940 film. “Mum loved it. She thought it was great.” Olivier had originally wanted to play opposite Vivien Leigh, “but it would be ridiculous because if Vivien Leigh played the second Mrs de Winter, she’d have fired Mrs Danvers on the first morning,” chuckles Browning. Instead, Joan Fontaine excelled as the naïve innocent caught in Mrs Danvers’s sights. Born in London in 1907, into a wealthy family, Daphne was the second of three daughters. A tomboy – and her actor father’s favourite – she preferred visiting Ferryside, the family’s remote holiday home, to participating in London society. She married the charismatic Boy Browning, who later became Prince Philip’s treasurer, after a three-month courtship when she was 25 and he 35.

One of the du Maurier sisters had first spotted the handsome Browning sailing his boat in Fowey harbour; he had actually set out there after reading du Maurier’s first novel, The Loving Spirit, falling in love with her graphic descriptions of the Cornish coastline. Their marriage was stable, despite infidelities on both sides, and they went on to have three children: Tessa, Flavia and Christian (known as “Kits”). It was quite clear that Kits was her favourite, and she doted on him. Biographers have described her as an aloof mother, especially towards her daughters, and nannies and housekeepers were employed to occupy them as she wrote. Du Maurier has also been described as something of a recluse, shunning publicity and social invitations. Yet Kits remembers her as being funny and warm. “As a mother and as a grandmother to our kids, she was the most wonderful and easy-going person, who’d join in and play cricket or football with the kids and all that. She wasn’t at all aloof. But she was very fond of her privacy.” The novel has repeatedly been adapted for stage and screen, with du Maurier herself writing the first theatrical treatment.

As his mother’s literary executor following her death in 1989, Browning has been pivotal in their promotion. “Since the original film, I’ve been involved in so many touring plays of it,” with a range of actors playing Maxim. “Simon Williams. He was so good. And Nigel Havers, of course. The production they did three or four years ago did fantastically well. He does bring ’em in.” Her estate, he admits, has a responsibility to the reputation of the book. Two well-received incidental novels have been authorised – Susan Hill’s Mrs de Winter and Sally Beauman’s Rebecca’s Tale. And one of Browning’s three sons, Ned, has designed a collection of Swiss-made du Maurier watches – the Maxim for men, the Rebecca for ladies – following the lead of his dapper great-grandfather, the thespian Gerald du Maurier, who launched a brand of du Maurier cork-tipped cigarettes. There has even been Rebecca: The Musical, which had a three-year run in Vienna before moving to Japan, Germany, South Korea and Sweden. “It is absolutely fantastic as a spectacle. Almost as Mrs Danvers comes to the top of the stairs, there’s a sort of 'boo’.

It’s like pantomime,” says Browning. What, I wonder, might his mother have made of it? “I think she’d be delighted. It’s a very gothic version.” So what’s next for this classic? Well, Browning announces, “we’re coming full circle with it because we’re just about to sign an option for a remake. Cinema. Big cinema.” Colin Firth is the only leading man he can think of for Maxim. And Mrs Danvers? “Doing fantasy trip, you’ve got to have a Meryl Streep. Or Glenn Close, she’d be good.” And will the Thirties setting remain? Browning pauses to consider a modern take. “You can’t really set it today. You wouldn’t have butlers today, would you? Unless you’re a footballer. Wayne Rooney, you rang m’lord?” Browning buckles over with laughter, drowning out the gulls. “No, you couldn’t do it like that.”

Question: In which book does the malevolent housekeeper Mrs Danvers appear?
Answer: Rebecca